Features

When it comes to school, Bonita Baca has always been marked as present. She’s never been a no-show since the beginning of kindergarten.

Not one single day.

“I just love school, I love learning,” said the West Las Vegas senior.

Baca is also a year into her college career, having taken dual-enrollment classes at Highlands University. She maintains a 4.1 grade point average as a senior, and has earned a 4.0 GPA in her studies at Highlands University.

West Las Vegas Principal Gene Parson said everything about this teenager is impressive.

Buses from Belen, Cobre, Pojoaque, Bernalillo, Springer, Maxwell, Santa Rosa and other schools dropped off students to attend College Night on Tuesday.

The event began a dozen years ago when Luna Community College invited students from Las Vegas and the surrounding area to bring in their juniors and seniors to see what the college offered.

Highlands University joined Luna the following year, and officials say it has grown every year since.

A generalization holds that one learns by interacting with others -- listening, speaking, reading, but what if one cannot hear? We might conclude that being unable to use one of these modalities would result in a disability.

Not necessarily.

Take Las Vegas’ Clarence and Faye Falvey. They stress that deafness or being hard-of-hearing is not a handicap, but rather -- a difference. Both were born into hearing and speaking families.

Unveiling a mural two days before Martin Luther King Day, Casa de Cultura Director Miguel Angel quoted King as saying, “Our goal is to create the beloved community, and this will create a qualitative change in our souls, as well as a qualitative change of our lives.”

Angel said people must become more active in their community.

“The youth are our focus. Dr. King used to say, ‘A community that does not esteem its youth has no future,’ and we take that to heart,” Angel said.

The words became more difficult as the spelling bee progressed at Paul D. Elementary School last week. And the younger kids began to drop out.

But third-grader Austen King finished in the top three and stood with fifth-graders A.J Larrañaga and Connor Houdek, who won took first and second places respectively.

In all spelling bees, there are lessons learned even when kids misspell a word. For example, one of the younger children spelled “honest,” O-N-E-S-T, which makes perfect phonetic sense, and was a lesson in silent consonants and vowels. 

Wendy Armijo doesn’t claim to be a teetotaler. And she won’t tell you to never drink.

But she draws the line at drinking and driving.

For the last eight years, Armijo has served as the coordinator for the San Miguel County DWI Planning Council. She says she comes to that role with an understanding.

The dapper gentleman wearing a steel-gray ascot that matches his suit waits at his front door.

I fumble with my writing tools, exit the car and cross the street. Per his cachet of impeccable elegance, he kisses my hand in true gentlemanly fashion. I feel that “I have arrived.” I had looked forward to talking with this couple — the word was out that they are the essence of the true meaning of volunteerism.

There are a few vantages from which to view our current economic malaise.

Some see it as an isolated bump in the road that can be fixed by the gummint doling out largesse to Wall Street and other failed ventures.

Others, like myself, see  our current economic troubles as the first, spreading crack in an edifice on the verge of collapse.

Let me tell you why.

Students at Sierra Vista Elementary School found that a small gesture of kindness can create a lot of magic.

Teacher Tom Conklin spearheaded a schoolwide drive for UNICEF raising $416.50 for underprivileged kids in many countries. He said the donations help with vaccinations, food, clean water, blankets, school books and many other necessities.  

First-grader Amor Roybal said, “It made me feel good to collect money for the kids who are sick and don’t have any money or clothing.”